


Falling stars

by imsfire



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Feels, Fix-It, Hope, Post-Battle of Yavin, Somebody Lives/Not Everybody Dies, all the feels, and a tiny bit of angst, hand-holding, meteors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 08:03:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11870061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: They didn’t have the time, and they’d moved too fast because of that.  They’d moved too fast and now they cannot move, are paralysed around one another, remembering.  How can it ever be the same, how can it possibly be real, after that?It's a short time after the battle of Yavin and Cassian still does't know if Jyn has decided to stay with the Rebellion.





	Falling stars

It’s a few days after the battle.  The debris showers have ceased, and retrieval teams have collected as much large scrap as possible as it either drifted in space or slid into Yavin’s orbital pull.  Resources are limited, after all, and the remains of the Death Star constitute a sizeable supply of materials; high-strength alloys, rare earths, precious fragments of kyber crystal.  Work teams have dragged it all into holding areas above the fourth moon and packed it into a pair of battered asteroid-dredgers.  They will form part of the general evacuation, very soon, so for now their cargo is unsorted, just raw materials, crammed into every inch of hold space.  There’s a whole fleet of barges up there, right now, getting loaded.

Steadily, with as much speed as possible, the entire Massassi base is being dismantled.  Within a few seasons, Cassian’s home for the last five years will be jungle again.

He doesn’t care, not really.  Losing people and places and things is so normal to him that he can easily convince himself he doesn’t even notice anymore.  There’s even a good side to it.  His quarters here have always had a mildew problem, thanks to the chronic shortage of working dehumidifiers.  Although the Alliance have a habit of picking uncomfortable worlds for their HQ, nonetheless it will be good to be based somewhere that isn’t hot and damp for a change.

He wonders what Jyn thinks of it all, though. 

Whenever he sees her, she seems happy.  He knows she’s asked for a temporary assignment to a work crew, and it doesn’t surprise him to learn she’s exceptionally hard-working.  She must be worn out by the days’ end, but she’s contributing willingly to the current task.  While she decides what to do long-term.  For now it seems she's happy to help them pack the base up.

It makes sense, from the intel he’s read on Saw’s partisans.  Jyn will be deeply familiar with the importance of moving on.  They seem to have changed their base of operations almost a dozen times in the eight or so years she was with them.  But their cadre was small and lightly-equipped; it can’t have been much more than striking camp, not an operation like this, the entire rebellion taking itself methodically apart and packing itself away. 

When he’d said _Welcome home_ , he didn’t mean _Welcome home for the next six weeks max and then welcome to Force-knows-where, very-likely-somewhere-horrible_.

Perhaps, with hindsight, it hadn’t been the best thing to say.

 _I’m not used to people sticking around_ ; her words had struck something inside him that resonated and went on resonating, like a temple bell.  How long had it been since anyone had cared enough to stick by her?  Enough to come back for her, come through for her, come looking for her?  He’d read her file, he knew the factual story; knew exactly how long it was since she’d had anything like a home or a family.  And _Welcome to my rather warlike (found) family_ would have been a more accurate way to express what he’d been trying to say.  But no-one says such things.  Welcome to my family?  Clumsy and comical, embarrassingly coy.  Besides, what did family mean, wherever you were and whoever they were, except that you had a home?

He knows the facts, but he has no idea what the experience of those facts had been, for her.  He’d always had someone, even when he hadn’t felt able to reach out to them.  Jyn has known what it is to be truly, utterly alone.

There’s no sign of her this hot sticky evening.  It fidgets him, not knowing where she is.  He’s only three days out of med-bay, only a week out of bacta; still limping and taking painkillers, still itching at the raw pink skin of new scars.  And at the burr that is knowing Jyn and wanting to be near her, wanting to know she’s safe and well, that she has found her family, in his.

Wanting her to be with him, part of his home.

“Anyone seen Jyn Erso?” he asks through the hangar.  The sun is sinking into the trees outside, long orange shadows lancing across the runway and into the dark interior.  The day shifts have already packed up and a night patrol is just setting out.

He doesn’t, he can’t, expect her to want to be with him.  He wants and he cannot want and his weary brain and wearier heart hang in limbo, longing, itching, aching, wishing.

They’re cautious around one another, have been ever since he got out of med-bay; ever since he woke, and lay staring at her asleep in the next bed, her profile, her bruises and scratches, her battered, perfect face, alive. 

They didn’t have the time, and they’d moved too fast because of that.  Moved into one another’s orbits, into one another’s deepest trust, into a place where shared silence could say everything and a single embrace was a lifetime.  They’d moved too fast and now they cannot move, are paralysed around one another, remembering.  How can it ever be the same, how can it possibly be real, after that?

But he wants, he wants; just to know where she is, and that she is well, and will stay.

At last, after a dozen vague directional gestures and friendly apologies, someone tells him where she is.

Sunsets are fast, here in the tropics.  It’s fully dark by the time he reaches the terrace at the top of pyramid four.  Far below, the base lights flood the open mouths of hangars with gold, and the long shadows come from within now; flickering dancing shapes of figures at work, distorted graceful ship forms.  But up here, he’s well above the flat pool of light, above even the tree tops. 

He masks the residual glow from ground level with one hand, letting his eyes adjust.  Without that brightness, everything else is cool and dim, colours muted to indigo and maroon.  There’s only the soft light reflected from Yavin’s night-side. 

He picks his way carefully across the stone platform in the near-dark.

Jyn is sitting near the edge of the roof, with her legs stretched out in front and her head tilted back.  She’s wearing something sleeveless and light-coloured; the pallor of the fabric and her bare arms and neck show up clearly, against the dark sky.  Beyond her the stars are scattered like raindrops above the horizon.

Higher up, where she’s gazing, they are thicker, a broad band of them crossing the sky.  The galaxy hangs, a clear wave passing through space, milky with light.

Cassian walks forward, cautious, to the edge.  He says her name softly, sees the pale shape of her body move as she turns to look at him. 

Her face is still as an opal in the night.  “I’m watching more debris fall,” she says after a moment.  “Join me?”

“There’s still debris to watch?  I thought it was all gone by now.”  Cassian crosses the last metre of roof and sinks to his haunches, letting himself settle sideways stiffly until he’s seated next to her.  A strange, incongruous sense-memory kicks in, of the last time he sat down like that, toppling onto the sand, spine and ribs and lungs and hips all screaming with pain.  Her hand stealing out for his, and the incomparable relief of touching her.  Holding onto life in that warm grasp, holding onto her.

Perhaps the rest of his life will have these moments, he thinks; like echoes, ripples back from the impact of that day of pain and hope and Jyn in his arms.

He refuses himself permission to reach for her now.  Just because he wants it doesn’t mean she does.  They couldn’t know one another and then they did, so entirely; but it was too fast, and now they’re back at that earlier stage, ignorant and uncertain and wanting.

Or he is, anyway.

They sit side by side, close but not too close, facing not the base but the empty darkness of forest and sky.  A meteor streaks by overhead, and Jyn’s arm swings up.  “There!  Told you there was!”

Cassian gives a little huff of exhaled breath at the beauty of the sight.  He’s seen this before, this scratch of fire arcing across the zenith.  He starts to speak and halts himself; counts backwards hastily from today.  These three days, then six in med-bay, and the days before that, and – “I don’t think that is debris.  I think it’s the Daughters of Ocean.”

“The what?”

“The meteor shower.  Yavin crosses its path every summer.  There’s been – so much happening lately – I didn’t even think about them.”

“Meteors?” There’s a smile in her voice.  “My mother was interested in meteors.  When they land.  Meteorites?”  And then a sigh.  “I wish I’d had more of an education.  Mama and Papa knew so much and I don’t really know anything at all.  Only how to fight.  How to kill.”

“Me too.”

There’s another flash of light overhead, emanating from the same area of sky.  He traces its path with his eyes.  Wonders if she’s doing the same, in the darkness, at his side.

“When we win,” she says, hesitant; and

“ ** _If_** –“ he corrects automatically, years of caution flooding back in an instant -

And “No, Cassian, I’m going to say when – _when_ we win, I want to go to school.” Her voice shifts in the air, and he thinks she’s looking his way.  “You could do the same.  We could learn.”

It’s only now with the second use of the word that it suddenly hits home.  “You said ‘we’...”

“Yes…”  Jyn’s voice goes soft as though she’s short of breath, and he sees the pale shadow of her face narrow to a fine profile as she looks away quickly.  “I meant, if you wanted to, I mean, I’m not trying to say you and I have to – to do anything together, we don’t even have to stay in touch or anything –“ She’s hurrying words out anxiously.  Cassian reaches over without thinking, his hand drawn to hers. 

The touch seems to jolt her almost as much as it does him and she falls silent. 

Their fingers intertwine.

“You said ‘we’ earlier, I mean.  When we win.”

“Yes?” Her tone is faintly defensive.

“You’re staying, then?”

“Yes, of course I’m staying.”  The momentary note of anxiety fades, and the smile-tone comes again.  “Of course I am.”

He can’t speak for a moment.  He squeezes her hand, hoping his grip conveys the _Thank you_ he cannot find the breath to say.

“And I believe we’ll win,” Jyn says.  “I never did before but – you –“

“Me?”

“You.” And there’s an answering squeeze, strong pressure, fingers holding tight.  She isn’t wearing her grip-gloves, he notices.  Her hand is warm.

They don’t speak for a while, until another meteor streaks across the darkness.  Cassian says “I don’t know why they’re called the Daughters of Ocean.  Like you said, no real education… “  He thinks.  She’s staying, Jyn is staying.  She believes they can win.  She believes there’s a future, that one day she might be able to think about – they both might be able to think about – studying and doing something with their lives.  And – she believes in - _him_ -

He wants to welcome her, further, deeper, more nearly.   Welcome and thank her.  How can hope come down to something as simple as touching a hand in the darkness?

The sense-memories are almost overwhelming, and it hits him suddenly, they are not just from Scarif.  His throat feels hoarse when he speaks again.  “When I was a little boy, there was a meteor shower just like this, late every spring, on Fest.  It came just at the point when the weather had warmed up a bit – Fest didn’t have much of a summer but there was a less-cold season! – and this was almost always just warm enough to spend time outside after dark.  If you had a good thick coat.   And people did.  We had star parties.  We’d cook outdoors on an open fire, play dusk games, sit out wrapped in rugs and parkas, watching the sky.  There was this tradition that if you made a wish when you saw a shooting star and you didn’t tell anyone what it was till you saw another one, then your wish would come true.”

Jyn chuckles beside him.  It’s the first time he’s heard her laugh; it’s a sweet, small sound, rather rusty and husky.  “And did they?  Come true?”

“I always wished for things like a sugar-apple or a stick of chocolate, so yes, they did.  My parents used to wish for peace.  And every year since Base One moved here, I’ve looked at these meteors and wished for the same thing.  Every time, every summer.  Please let there be a breakthrough against the Empire, please let something give us hope.”  He presses her warm hand again.  “And it’s come true, at last.”

“I’m making a wish,” Jyn says.

“So am I.”

Another streak of light leaps across the sky; light in the darkness, sword-sharp and beautiful.

Hands held tight, they sit sky-watching.  Until the next star, and the next.


End file.
